Transcript
Speaker: This is Dr. Bennett.
Speaker: I'm joined here by David Moore.
Speaker: David's a member of Exit.
Speaker: He's built a successful pharmaceutical sales business, which he sold in 2017.
Speaker: He's a very active, ambitious guy, but right now he has the freedom to pour all that energy into things that he really cares about.
Speaker: Right now he's building a sales consultancy to help companies get more out of their sales force and their products.
Speaker: Exit is a little bit unique in that groups like this tend to draw really money-driven guys, but with us, it's really about getting money out of the way.
Speaker: So I wanted to talk to David about how he did it and what the rest of us can learn from it.
Speaker: So welcome to the show, David.
Speaker: Thank you, Bennett.
Speaker: Good to be here.
Speaker: Great to have you.
Speaker: So you're not a pharmacist.
Speaker: You don't have a healthcare science background.
Speaker: So how did you get in that room?
Speaker: I had a summer internship in my sophomore year at a healthcare company that when the summer internship came to a close, I was encouraged by my boss at the time to stick around throughout the fall semester and maybe consider going to night school.
Speaker: And I finished college and basically remained an intern, so to speak, at that company for the remainder of my college years.
Speaker: Was it a sales internship?
Speaker: No, it was an operations internship, but I was sort of an admin intern learning a lot of things.
Speaker: I got to do some training at that company.
Speaker: I got to do some travel even a little bit as a college kid, which feels really cool when you're telling your night school teacher that you have to be out of class for work.
Speaker: And you're still at the college age.
Speaker: So that was an exciting time for me.
Speaker: And so basically, to answer your question, I used my opportunity in my internship to make connections.
Speaker: And I was looking for jobs that would be relevant to my skill set after my college years were over.
Speaker: And I found a connection that got me into pharma-like sales, pharmacy sales, that was the space that I entered into.
Speaker: So I know a lot of guys that have marketing degrees.
Speaker: I have an econ degree, a lot of business.
Speaker: the consensus among guys with those degrees generally tends to be, boy, that was a waste of time and money.
Speaker: That was, nobody cared.
Speaker: Particularly in my case, nobody cared that I had an undergraduate economics degree.
Speaker: Nobody wanted to hire me on that basis.
Speaker: But you made use of that experience in a different way.
Speaker: Tell us about how you leveraged that.
Speaker: Well, I certainly think it's important that I saw the value of extending that summer internship.
Speaker: I realized that being an intern and being in a corporate environment for that period of my life was as equal, or if not more valuable than the education I was getting at night.
Speaker: So I approached both the day and the night with the similar eye to who are the people that will be helping me with the next step of my career.
Speaker: And so certainly the content of a marketing degree probably provided me with simply ambition.
Speaker: You read about these case studies and it gets you excited.
Speaker: And for me, a lot of times information is energy.
Speaker: And so I looked at the educational part as, you know, you needing to punch a ticket perhaps for some of the organizations that I'd be working for in the future.
Speaker: But I looked at the environment around me for the real value, the people, the people value.
Speaker: Yeah, that's such an interesting point.
Speaker: Information is energy.
Speaker: The stuff that I valued from my MBA was definitely not like I know how to do valuation or I know how to build this or that spreadsheet, which is most of what the technical content is.
Speaker: The stuff that I valued was these exciting stories and these aspirational, these dreams that they give you to dream.
Speaker: So I really admire that you leveraged it that way because I so wish that I had done that.
Speaker: I so wish that I had spent the time getting pumped, dreaming big, making these connections.
Speaker: And that, I think, is totally your vibe now.
Speaker: Like that's the energy that you throw off in every conversation.
Speaker: So the impression that I get culturally from the pharma sales game,
Speaker: is that it's sort of a way to cash in if you're handsome.
Speaker: Like the pharma sales is about kind of being a booth babe and schmoozing and boozing with fancy people and looking fancy and dressing fancy.
Speaker: To what extent is that perception accurate?
Speaker: Well, there's certainly room for everyone, but yeah, there's a lot of, there are certainly aesthetics, aesthetics matter everywhere, but I can definitely say that what I really saw is a very large and
Speaker: varied industry where you have people that are, there's a lot of work being done in the healthcare world and, you know, nurses and doctors and the whole healthcare holistic process is just very labor intensive.
Speaker: And so the way that I think the most powerful and durable,
Speaker: salespeople made it in that industry was to really be just this endless source of value, whether that was you were kind of taking on like a social work vibe at times, you were taking on consultative vibe, you were doing
Speaker: basically had your sleeves rolled up and the powers that be, the people that sort of make decisions in the healthcare world really respected the grittier, heartier types of sales reps that were out there.
Speaker: There wasn't a lot of
Speaker: Certainly there's a need for, you know, attractive people at a booth or attractive people popping into an office, but that world of aesthetics only, I think only goes so far, right?
Speaker: And so you have to really think about what is your value to the process as it's happening.
Speaker: And I think the people that did best at that really found their place in that process.
Speaker: So let me ask you this to make it more concrete.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If you were advising someone to jump into that game,
Speaker: is it worth it to drop a couple of Gs on a style consultant or an image consultant?
Speaker: Oh, absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, I think the answer is yes.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: That's a yes.
Speaker: I mean, I think that's the right place to hire somebody like Tanner to up your style game is certainly smart.
Speaker: So, well, that's interesting about being gritty and like rolling up your sleeves.
Speaker: Because I think a lot of people, when they picture sales, they're just picturing like, I'm going to show up, I'm going to deliver a pitch and then I'm out.
Speaker: But you're talking about integrating yourself into the productive process for these clients.
Speaker: To the extent that you can.
Speaker: And I think in sales in general, one of the great disservices that you can hear when you're young is to see some really handsome sales guy or gal that just seems to have a genetic impact.
Speaker: predisposition for sales.
Speaker: And that is really, that's really a disservice to see that because I think the more you embed yourself and find yourself in the world of sales, you see that there are a lot of people that are involved in helping organizations make decisions and helping individuals make decisions.
Speaker: And a lot of times the less sexy side of sales involves a lot of people that aren't Ken and Barbie.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: They're really people that are helping with the completion of a sales cycle or the support of an ongoing enterprise or the support of an ongoing client relationship.
Speaker: And that is not something that I think a lot of people see.
Speaker: I also, I was really benefited when someone said sales is a skill and not something you're born with.
Speaker: And the sooner you can kind of
Speaker: embed that into your psyche, the more likely you are to think of sales as a very valuable process.
Speaker: And there's a lot of literature out there that you can get into that honors sales as more of a career and a craft and a trade that is learnable, valuable, and certainly appreciated by the client, the company you work for, all the parties involved.
Speaker: So you mentioned being a value to the client.
Speaker: And I think that's really interesting.
Speaker: How would that generalize?
Speaker: If you were coming in cold to a new industry, a new environment, how would you start?
Speaker: You know, I think one of the best pieces of advice I was given by a sales manager years ago was to sit down and think about your client as an individual and how they interact with your product, your process.
Speaker: And you may even have specific clients by name, you know, depending on the industry you're in and actually think about how are they going to use my service or how are they going to use my product?
Speaker: And how can I be, how can I make the entire experience change?
Speaker: of what they, of their interaction with me pleasant.
Speaker: And that can be even being just a resource in general.
Speaker: You know, I've made selections of, I've made sales choices in my life based on who are the most resourceful people in my life.
Speaker: And
Speaker: I want to go use the service that they're offering because they are just a service in general.
Speaker: And so if I purchase their financial services, I get access to them.
Speaker: And so access to the individual, I think is always a great way to think of how you present yourself as a salesperson.
Speaker: I think just in general, as a business person, you want to be someone for whom people are asking questions, advice, recommendations.
Speaker: Think of yourself as the concierge of your network, even the secretary of your network.
Speaker: Be the one that remembers the details.
Speaker: Be the one that remembers the agreements and the things that we're committed to.
Speaker: And that is really an area of attention to detail that I think people appreciate.
Speaker: Now, and I don't want to get into the Jungian thing, but attention to detail is not a strength.
Speaker: How did you develop that into a strength for you?
Speaker: So for me, it's attention to the person and it's attention to the conversation.
Speaker: And so if I can notice things that people say or impressions that they make or reactions to how something is presented, I can remember that as a detail.
Speaker: you know, ENFP for me, I know it is also for you.
Speaker: I can pay attention to impressions.
Speaker: I can pay attention to the aspects of people's personality for which I know that I can suggest things or recommend the right people to better serve them.
Speaker: Oftentimes in sales, I would discover that I was not the most compatible person with one individual or another, but I knew that there would be people
Speaker: And if I sensed that, if I felt that, I could bring someone else in who can make a stronger connection.
Speaker: And so really as salespeople, it's seeing what's happening.
Speaker: You know, again, we're getting in the Yoongian stuff.
Speaker: So I know that it's a little bit of a skill set for us to sense and feel people.
Speaker: But there are other ways in which your specific gifts show up in how you evaluate a sales opportunity.
Speaker: It's so dramatic, the difference when you frame it that way in terms of what am I thinking about?
Speaker: Because like, if I'm thinking about my job in terms of my to-do list and like dotting the I's and crossing the T's, that's really challenging for me.
Speaker: But if it's keeping in my mind the needs of a bunch of people, I actually have appetite for that.
Speaker: Like I can totally do that.
Speaker: And so, you know, that probably would have served me better to have figured that out in my quanti desk job.
Speaker: Although, you know, it's for the best.
Speaker: But yeah, and I wanted to talk to you about that a little bit.
Speaker: Like being in that, you know, I'll slop the pigs, I'll clean the stables, I'll do the grunt work to become valuable, to become a node in the system that people rely upon.
Speaker: That's something that you'll hear in every MBA course on the planet.
Speaker: for a while, but I found the work so desperately, horribly boring that it was just hard to hang on while I waited to become useful.
Speaker: So how do you find the motivation to do that grunt work that makes you valuable to the team?
Speaker: Well, I think it's realizing that at the end of the day, we're part of the human experience.
Speaker: And so we want to not be too far above anything.
Speaker: And certainly as salespeople, salespeople already kind of come prejudged oftentimes with having this agenda of one thing and one thing only.
Speaker: And certainly, I mean, yeah, it's okay to have an agenda.
Speaker: It's to do your job, but also to...
Speaker: It's endearing to be of service.
Speaker: And we appreciate people who are of service.
Speaker: And it comes naturally to who we are.
Speaker: And so a lot of salespeople that I think do very well touch into the aspects of their humanity.
Speaker: that come naturally and, or maybe that they've even, you know, they allow some of their, their, you know, kind of the, the more human sides of them to flourish in a sales role, which can be one way in sales is a, can be a very rewarding career as you get to bring, you know, some jobs don't allow you to be as lovey-dovey and as caring and noticing as you need to, maybe you would want to be.
Speaker: And maybe that's part of the solution is you should be in an environment where you're able to do things you care about.
Speaker: I mean, a lot of what it was for me is like, I just don't value this.
Speaker: I don't want that guy's job.
Speaker: I don't believe in what we're doing for people.
Speaker: So like the idea of furthering this kind of sucks and like isn't particularly motivating.
Speaker: But you know, if you're helping...
Speaker: sick people get better.
Speaker: And I know there's like a financial component to that that complicates it a little bit.
Speaker: But at least in theory, the thing you're doing is of real value.
Speaker: It's not of negative value.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: And I think of adjacent careers as I'm doing the work that I'm doing.
Speaker: So I've always loved coaching.
Speaker: I've loved podcasts.
Speaker: I've loved books.
Speaker: I've loved seminars.
Speaker: And so sometimes it's fun to sort of imagine yourself being
Speaker: doing something adjacent as you're conducting your work.
Speaker: So for example, talking to a sales team, I might tap into the material that I've read, or I might embody some of the concepts that I've seen on stage as far as how to use coaching as a tool for communicating with the client, right?
Speaker: Is this a conversation about selling or is this a conversation about goals and ambitions and desired outcomes?
Speaker: Sales allows you to...
Speaker: pull from a wider range of soft careers that can all come in handy.
Speaker: So, you know, for me, it was about reading about psychology, reading about coaching, friendships, storytelling, all the things that make you an interesting person and make you understand humans in general and sort of what makes them tick, make you more pleasant to be around and more conversational and more interested in others.
Speaker: The coaching angle to sales is so interesting because to me, what I am offering to people is work.
Speaker: Like I'm saying, I'll help you to build something.
Speaker: And so that conversation has to start with like,
Speaker: Do you have something you want to build?
Speaker: Do you feel like you have the will to accomplish that?
Speaker: And if you don't, why not?
Speaker: Like, what's in the way?
Speaker: What's holding you back?
Speaker: How can I help you talk through that?
Speaker: And because I really believe in this group and what you guys are able to do together, the difficulty is not like, does this offering have value?
Speaker: Getting over the hump is usually about like, is this person in a state where they're ready to jump in and make use of it?
Speaker: Because if you're not ready, then it's just, you know, you're just throwing the money away.
Speaker: But yeah, the value proposition is very much about your personal state of readiness.
Speaker: And I think there's a lot of sales that's like that where, you know, if you're selling gym memberships or you're selling business services.
Speaker: So just last night we were talking to somebody who was hiring on sales reps.
Speaker: And that implies some ambition and some optimism about, will I be able to put these guys to work?
Speaker: Will I be able to accomplish that?
Speaker: And so like selling in a lot of ways is coaching the customer to like, yes, I'm ready to, I'm ready to leverage this to make my life better.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And therefore so much more so is it required to really believe in what it is you sell.
Speaker: And so it's, it's, you know, sales, sales as a craft is, is important to learn.
Speaker: yet it's also important to be behind something you really believe in.
Speaker: And that can be a little bit of trial and error.
Speaker: I mean, I certainly understand people that have kind of wanted to just learn sales for sales sake.
Speaker: And sales is a lot like, it's a big word like sports or entrepreneurship.
Speaker: Yeah, can mean a lot of things.
Speaker: Can mean a lot of things.
Speaker: And so if you want to be in that more consultative coaching type sale, there's going to be a series of,
Speaker: of experiences that you'll probably need to go through to determine where that right fit is for you.
Speaker: How much client interaction, how much learning about the client, how much quarterbacking and secretarial work do you want to be involved with to be in sales?
Speaker: And I've had friends in
Speaker: you know, software sales, like it's a very large level.
Speaker: And that's, that's a whole nother game, right?
Speaker: Where you're, you're dealing with large organizations and it's slow and it's, and it's, it's not the same as maybe, you know, selling a gym member, or it's certainly not the same as selling a gym membership, but ultimately there's a, there's an attention to detail and a caring about the goals of people.
Speaker: Yeah, and that, I mean, in a lot of cases, those kind of sales reps, they're earning their recurring because they're helping to maintain, they're helping to troubleshoot, they're educating you on how to integrate the software into your existing system.
Speaker: There's very much an ongoing relationship that you're building.
Speaker: It's not just about the pitch.
Speaker: And so, yeah.
Speaker: Well, that leads into something that I want to discuss.
Speaker: Guys like us, I think, often suffer from imposter syndrome because the thing that we have to offer is not a hard skill.
Speaker: We're not going to dig into your computer and make it run better.
Speaker: We're not going to write the code.
Speaker: We don't have the invention to sell that we invented.
Speaker: But I know from talking to you, you've got guys kicking down your door to bring you into their projects.
Speaker: So you have something rare that
Speaker: and valuable to bring to the table.
Speaker: What do you think that is?
Speaker: Well, thanks for saying that.
Speaker: I appreciate it.
Speaker: I feel, you know, it's one of those things that those of us with soft skills have to make peace with that are more ruddy, durable, hard skill brethren build a lot of the world we live in.
Speaker: And we're very grateful to them for their skill set.
Speaker: And certainly the variation that exists amongst all of us is a great thing.
Speaker: But in accepting the softer skills gift, I think it's a little bit of understanding that one of the things that I get a lot is,
Speaker: you know, I mean, we didn't really know that you were essential, but now that you're here, we really don't want you to leave.
Speaker: And can you come back?
Speaker: And we want that again.
Speaker: And we want that experience of you again.
Speaker: And there's something you add to this, to this, that's maybe not as easy to, to articulate, I think sometimes with the soft skill people, but we can, but we certainly can do so.
Speaker: And I think, you know, I've worked with Scott to determine that, you know, one of the aspects of what I,
Speaker: add to a business conversation can be likened to like a fertilizer that you put on crops.
Speaker: It's something that you don't need it until you've seen your neighbor get it.
Speaker: And then you're like, oh, what are you using there?
Speaker: Oh, all right.
Speaker: Well, David Moore's got something that must be valuable because it certainly seems to make a difference.
Speaker: And I experienced it once myself and I like it.
Speaker: We had this conversation about value proposition in our entrepreneurship call last night and how you and I both have this situation where we have anecdotes.
Speaker: We have stories about, you know, I brought a guy in and then I did something.
Speaker: And then on the other end of it, we had success.
Speaker: It went really well.
Speaker: And like, if I take the time, I can break down like, well, I
Speaker: we had this really valuable conversation where we broke down like some psychological barriers.
Speaker: And then,
Speaker: I connected him with people who also helped him break down some barriers that I wasn't able to break down because I'm a different guy with a different experience.
Speaker: These people were more like him and they were able to like jack in to stuff I couldn't jack into.
Speaker: And then we got him referred to people who had experience in the thing that he was trying to do.
Speaker: And so that helped him to be less afraid.
Speaker: And so it's not like I taught him Python and he got a Python job.
Speaker: Some of that is like directly like, you know, we connect people to people who know Python.
Speaker: But in a lot of these cases, we have guys who already can do...
Speaker: the thing and it's like they got to let go of the feather and they know they can still fly.
Speaker: And that's like, maybe that trivializes it, but it's definitely about these conversations, right?
Speaker: Certainly.
Speaker: And I think there's something to, you know, the value of a storyteller or the value of seeing our contribution through past stories is
Speaker: I think one of the things that I've noticed I've been able to do is when I find someone who is doing, going about their daily work, I can often add meaning to what they do by talking about what I see it is that they're doing.
Speaker: I see that you're doing this and I see that you're doing that.
Speaker: And they go, yeah, wow, I really am.
Speaker: I really am doing that.
Speaker: Thank you for saying that.
Speaker: And it's energy.
Speaker: You know, energy is one of these things.
Speaker: I mean, it's it runs the world, but we we discount it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But but certainly energy makes a difference.
Speaker: And obviously, with what we talk about, it's more than energy, but it's also that.
Speaker: And I think one of the one of the things that we can.
Speaker: approach with our soft skills way of being is where in the story did my value click in?
Speaker: Let me reverse engineer what happened there and pluck out my contribution.
Speaker: And that's what we do for other people as well.
Speaker: I mean, it starts with me reverse engineering my own value proposition, but it's just like what you're talking about.
Speaker: You watch what somebody's doing and you say, this is the value.
Speaker: This is what you're providing.
Speaker: And in a lot of cases,
Speaker: In a lot of cases, it's hard for all kinds of people to answer those questions.
Speaker: What's my value?
Speaker: What does this mean?
Speaker: And potentially they may be providing value in the wrong place or in the wrong way that it's not being rewarded, it's not being valued.
Speaker: And so you can potentially redirect.
Speaker: I guess what I'm addressing is I think that attacking questions of meaning has professional consequences.
Speaker: it has brass tacks ROI consequences and helping people to address that is valuable.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Our friend Scott's comment of business being personal adjacent, you know, and I've talked in our group about the value of paid conversations.
Speaker: You know, I've always enjoyed hiring coaches and the types of experts that can give me feedback about myself.
Speaker: And so that's one way that someone with soft skills can
Speaker: can really conduct discovery through conversation.
Speaker: And so, one of many ways to get to improve in a sales role or to improve as a soft skills person is to have a board of advisors, not necessarily officially, but in your mind of people that you go to refine your thinking and to help you see sometimes what you can't see.
Speaker: And we see so much concrete value
Speaker: And we, you know, we're certainly in a world right now where in the tech space, right, the developers and a lot of the individuals are having a moment of real, the world is calling on them, that they are in high demand.
Speaker: And so some of us in the softer skills feel a little bit adrift.
Speaker: And I think that that's where we can, it's through conversations that I think we really address a lot of our needs and also meet the needs of others.
Speaker: Yeah, and it's not automatable or it's very challenging to automate.
Speaker: And so there's a sense in which it's a really strong exit opportunity because it's hard to take from you.
Speaker: It's hard to scale those conversations and that sense of meaning.
Speaker: Yeah, it really is.
Speaker: I mean, I think if you think about, you know, one of the last the last automatable things for AI to take will be will be the great stories, storytellers and the great meaning makers and the the imagination.
Speaker: You look at the content coming out of Netflix that's algorithmically generated and like
Speaker: Even with them also paying really, really expensive writers, it's so bad.
Speaker: It is like there's no soul to it.
Speaker: There's no magic to it.
Speaker: And so, yeah, I totally like I am not an AI maximalist.
Speaker: I think that there are problems it can solve and there are problems that it's never going to solve.
Speaker: And one of those is poetry and beauty and meaning and connection between human beings.
Speaker: it's an important role to play.
Speaker: And I think the challenge for a person in that position who has this sort of gift for strategy and coaching and connection is just, if you're a programmer, you can send somebody to your GitHub.
Speaker: And if your program runs and does what it's supposed to do and looks like it's supposed to look, they know that you're competent.
Speaker: They know that you can do it.
Speaker: And so the challenge for guys like us is to build credibility because the thing that we do is hard to quantify and hard to articulate.
Speaker: Yeah, it really is an experiential, you have to experience us and that can be a challenge.
Speaker: And again, we can work with others to help us articulate it.
Speaker: And there's certainly the copywriters of the world and the people that can really draw out our value for others.
Speaker: And we can do that ourselves, but there is a, we have to oftentimes embed ourselves into teams.
Speaker: I'm great in a classroom and I've also noticed that,
Speaker: I'm really great with deep friendship conversations and connecting.
Speaker: And, but, you know, again, these are all things that are kind of done through iteration.
Speaker: And so the work of the soft skill craftsman still exists and it's, it's the work of iteration, another conversation, another conversation, and then doing the, you know, doing the physical and the technical components that, that are within your grasp, but then your reach certainly, but there may be a lot of discovery,
Speaker: is part of our work.
Speaker: And again, if somebody's got to be out there sweating and slinging the hammer, then we've got to be putting in our reps as well.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: And I think the tech sales, the growth of tech sales, and I think this also applies to medical technology.
Speaker: The fact that there is so much money accruing to these technical solutions that are so scalable provides an opportunity for
Speaker: people with these soft skills.
Speaker: Because I don't think there's been a time in history where there's been such a mismatch between the skills required to create the solution.
Speaker: and the skills required to sell the solution.
Speaker: Because the type of guy that can build that is not the type of guy that can sell it almost all the time.
Speaker: There are exceptions, there are anomalies, very gifted prodigies who are also really socially adept, but by and large, they need help.
Speaker: They need help to build the message and convey it.
Speaker: So yeah, it's a huge opportunity space.
Speaker: So to somebody who's in this situation, maybe they're in a dead-end job.
Speaker: They know they've got this capacity and this temperament that's good, but it's just not being exploited or rewarded by their employer.
Speaker: So say you're talking to me three years ago.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: I'm a finance guy, and I hate my industry, and I'm not looking for self-help to be a better finance guy and to work that network.
Speaker: I want out.
Speaker: I want to go be a sales rep.
Speaker: Where do I start?
Speaker: Well, I think it starts with listing out who is in your world, who is in your, who, if you think of your network as clients and who do I know, what value can I provide them?
Speaker: Think of this as like an action plan based on your network.
Speaker: I think Keith Ferrazzi was one that made it called it the network action plan.
Speaker: You write out who you, you write out who you know,
Speaker: You write out what value you can provide them.
Speaker: You write out who they know and what opportunities they could connect you to.
Speaker: Basically create almost like a reciprocity momentum.
Speaker: You want to be, again, depending on what stage you're at, you may just have friends who will help you and guide you.
Speaker: But assuming that you haven't really developed this side of your career and this side of your skill set, I think it's about getting a conversation going.
Speaker: Thinking of your network as clients, thinking of each individual as a resource to a next conversation.
Speaker: I like the phrase that I've heard, everything I want is in the next conversation.
Speaker: And it's not necessarily true, but it's certainly a way of being that you need to be talking your way to what you want.
Speaker: And you and I have talked about Stone Soup, the children's book where the soldiers walk into a town and
Speaker: Everyone's claiming that they don't have any ingredients to make food, right?
Speaker: And so these guys get a conversation going.
Speaker: They start talking about what would be great to have, and then an ingredient appears.
Speaker: And they continue to sort of speak this soup into existence by drawing out all the available resources.
Speaker: Much in the way that a salesperson can pitch a product or a service is a future salesperson can pitch a reality that they're seeing.
Speaker: and a vision.
Speaker: And as people start to see that reality and vision, they go, you know, I might have something that could add to that.
Speaker: I might have someone that I could give you a piece of information about.
Speaker: And so you talk your way into your future reality, but you certainly don't just talk.
Speaker: You're also serving, you're thanking, you're showing gratitude, you're paying it forward, you're paying it back.
Speaker: You're doing all the socially, you're doing all the right things to do.
Speaker: But you're keeping your eye on a future and you're helping people see that come to be.
Speaker: And that was certainly, you know, for me getting into sales, it was talking about my skills.
Speaker: It was being a certain way that people could imagine me in a future role.
Speaker: And I think that's the other thing that, you know, the way you're being in your current day-to-day, I think has a lot of impact on how people can imagine you further.
Speaker: Yeah, and so maybe you need to break out of, if you're not able, like if you're trying to project that kind of energy in your environment and you find that it's really, I mean, I'm talking about me.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And you find that it's really challenging to do that.
Speaker: You may need to get out of that environment and find a place where you're better
Speaker: That was Twitter for me.
Speaker: That was all of my energy, all of my vitality, all of my juice I was throwing out there instead of in my workplace, which was, in hindsight, the right move.
Speaker: There was nothing for me to gain from that workplace.
Speaker: And you were iterating, right?
Speaker: You were communicating and you were finding and refining your voice and being seen as a resource, being seen as an intellect that was valued.
Speaker: That was how I knew that I needed to keep doing it was people would reach out to me every like month and a half or so.
Speaker: And they would say, oh, this changed my relationship with my wife or this, you know, I'm going to go homeschool my kids or whatever it was.
Speaker: That happened all the time.
Speaker: And I was like, wow, okay, there's something really here.
Speaker: This is something I need to do.
Speaker: And that definitely was my approach with starting Exit.
Speaker: It was very clearly, I recognized a need in my network.
Speaker: I said, there was an element of that that was serendipity, but I was also thinking about it for a long time.
Speaker: I was thinking about people are finding value here.
Speaker: How do I make it so that I can do what I care about doing instead of doing this dead-end job just so I can pay the bills while my mind is in this other space?
Speaker: Yeah, I feel it's almost as if we catch wind and our kite gets going and we're like, wow, how can I keep chasing good sources of continual wind and let this thing stay above the right altitude?
Speaker: And certainly I've experienced that as well.
Speaker: I've enjoyed the variety of people in exit group.
Speaker: And I think that for me, it's about, I love a life of variety.
Speaker: I love a life of unique conversations.
Speaker: And so one of the reasons that I'm drawn to this group is a desire to keep that wind of a free life.
Speaker: And so one of the ways to do that for me is to live outside of a corporate entity.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that was going to be my next question is, why did you sign up for exit?
Speaker: Was that the goal in the beginning?
Speaker: The beginning, yeah, so it's changed because the value has come more clear to me as I've joined.
Speaker: But the beginning, it was really enjoying the freedom of kind of an early exit or not a permanent exit, but a
Speaker: I did sell a company, you know, in 2017, and I had some freedom that came from that.
Speaker: Not lifelong retirement freedom, but some freedom.
Speaker: And I wanted to be able to maintain a lifestyle where I could sit down and talk to anybody I wanted to be able to talk to on any issue.
Speaker: Either side, I want to be free in my association.
Speaker: It's really important to me.
Speaker: And so that the freedom of speech, freedom of association, I have, I place a very high value on that.
Speaker: And right now we're living in a time where challenging to be free in who you choose to sit with.
Speaker: And I have a rule that I get to sit with anybody I want on any topic and we can even take a picture.
Speaker: And that's fine, you know?
Speaker: Well, I think the value proposition for our intellectual software developer type guys is very much, I want to think my own thoughts.
Speaker: I want to be free to think and say what I think.
Speaker: And no one should be able to punish me for what I think, what I believe.
Speaker: And it's interesting the way that you framed it was, I want to be in the room with whoever I want to be with.
Speaker: And I don't want to be punished for my connections, which it just, it just grounds it in like who we are and where we come from.
Speaker: Because that's my, that's my, the same thing for me is like, who are you to tell me who I'm allowed to talk to?
Speaker: Like, it's this thing with Joe Rogan that's going on right now.
Speaker: It's like Joe Rogan, you know, I guess, I guess he took ivermectin or whatever.
Speaker: And like, that's, that's his big sin.
Speaker: But the real sin is that he's in the room with people he's not supposed to be in the room with.
Speaker: And that's a capital offense for these people.
Speaker: Yeah, I think, you know, and so for me, exit is a way to maintain that upward momentum that keeps us free, freely speaking, freely associating.
Speaker: So you're on a timetable.
Speaker: You're on a deadline, which is, you know, you have a certain amount of time in which to build your next opportunity.
Speaker: And you could right now,
Speaker: Jump right back into corporate sales.
Speaker: But you don't want to do that.
Speaker: So we are building something else.
Speaker: So tell me about this sales consultancy and what your business model is, how you're planning to deliver it.
Speaker: I've always had the idea in my mind that I wanted to do one-on-one consulting and coaching.
Speaker: And so one of the ways I can do that is I can do that with the coaching of salespeople and people who want to increase the amount of sales that they make within their organization.
Speaker: And that can be a venture that is a one-man venture, or it can be larger.
Speaker: It can be a small business, medium-sized business, whatever it might be.
Speaker: I am looking to interact with individuals and groups that
Speaker: that want to increase the yield and the revenue of their organization and their idea.
Speaker: The way that I approach
Speaker: increasing revenue is looking at what is it that you're offering now in your organization?
Speaker: What is it that you could be offering?
Speaker: I really take sort of a more holistic business development approach to sales.
Speaker: I'm not opposed to adding my two cents when it comes to things I think that your organization should be selling in addition to what you're trying to sell.
Speaker: I think a lot of the revenue that gets left on the table
Speaker: for organizations is in things that they don't quite see that the customer would like to pay for, that the customer would, you know, sometimes I've certainly experienced it where I'll go to a, I'll interact with someone or an organization or a venture or a website where I'll say, wow, I actually would have spent more money here, but they just don't seem to be taking any more from me.
Speaker: That's all they've got to give me here.
Speaker: I think having felt that and having seen examples throughout my, you know, conversations with entrepreneurs over the years,
Speaker: of where they discovered things that they could be adding to their product offerings or their service offerings has really excited me about sales consulting.
Speaker: Certainly there's lots of things that you can do with salespeople to increase the way that they sell.
Speaker: But I think the piece that's more exciting for business owners is increasing the predictability of the sale.
Speaker: Could it be a subscription?
Speaker: Could it be a longer term commitment?
Speaker: Is there something that you're offering your client
Speaker: as they approach the alumni status of your current offering?
Speaker: What is the lesser way that a full-blown client could interact with you or less than a full-blown client could interact?
Speaker: Do you have a medium and a small and does it come in different colors and does it have varieties?
Speaker: So really looking at almost kind of the merchandising aspect of your business as well as how do we display more varieties and allow people to experience you and your offering
Speaker: Which what's interesting about that to me is that it's about knowing your customer.
Speaker: It's about psychology.
Speaker: What are they really here to get?
Speaker: And what kind of person are they?
Speaker: And what else might they be interested in?
Speaker: And this is another angle where somebody like you, and this is a sense in which you and I, I think, are different, actually, is that you can go too far in this direction.
Speaker: But I think one of the things that makes certain types of small businesses really successful is frugality.
Speaker: and is being careful with your money and conservative.
Speaker: And it's challenging for a person who is like that temperamentally to get themselves in the mind of a customer who would like to spend.
Speaker: And so they're thinking like, I got to cut costs because this person is going to spend what they're like, what they're going to spend is fixed.
Speaker: And I want more profit, so I need to cut costs.
Speaker: Or I need to pare this thing down, pare it back so that I'm taking in more.
Speaker: And your mindset is, no, no, let's look at how you can be the emporium for all kinds of value and open up new things.
Speaker: And so that's an element of mindset that you bring.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I think, you know, I think obviously the benefits of frugality are awesome.
Speaker: I think one of the things that you can benefit from seeing a spending culture, if you have a frugal nature, to be around a spender for a day, right?
Speaker: A real big spender for a day.
Speaker: And see all of the enormous expenses that go, or big and small expenses that go into the
Speaker: the creation of his or her world.
Speaker: And, you know, I've been amazed when I've been with friends and seen the things that they, that they value and that they're willing to spend money on.
Speaker: And it gets my mind excited.
Speaker: And I think, you know, I almost feel like one, one version of a textbook could be credit card statements of the rich and famous, right?
Speaker: Where, where, where does, where is some of the low hanging fruit for which you could be, um,
Speaker: And certainly the people that have worked in the arts and in luxury goods have explored that domain, right?
Speaker: Things that seem so expensive.
Speaker: And then a lot of the luxury services that you see that exist, people's pets and all that.
Speaker: It's not necessarily that you want to be in that space, but you can learn a lot from how
Speaker: people view their money in different domains.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think we if you're used to the domain of scarcity,
Speaker: Of scarcity, sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And seeing, you know, one of the things that we've talked about is like paid conversations, right?
Speaker: If you, if you want to, I was exposed to coaching really early on, but when I got the idea that you could pay to talk to someone, man, my mind went wild.
Speaker: I thought everybody should have some, you know, everybody should have some business card in which they have some topic in which they should, you know, be billing for their conversation.
Speaker: And, you know, that's my, that's my merchant brain going wild there.
Speaker: But
Speaker: I got a little cousin who sells pest control and he's been just crazy successful.
Speaker: One of the things that he did, he says, I'm going to buy a Tesla.
Speaker: And I was like, well, I mean, that's a lot of money.
Speaker: Like, I mean, I know you're doing really well, but like, do you need a Tesla?
Speaker: Like, what's that about?
Speaker: And he's like, well...
Speaker: if the sexiness of the Tesla brings me on two new sales guys to my team, then it's paid for itself.
Speaker: And I was like, that is such an alien mindset.
Speaker: That is bananas to me.
Speaker: Like on the one hand, like I'm like, I can't, I can't dispute it.
Speaker: Like, like if that works, then yeah, I guess.
Speaker: But like, it's such a, it's such a mind blow to me that there are people operating on that level.
Speaker: I think it also comes from the, you know, spending is,
Speaker: Spending can give you energy.
Speaker: And again, you want to be careful with any of these frames, right?
Speaker: But spending, there is no, yeah, sure.
Speaker: But there is something that comes from, you know, we get energy from our clothing, we get energy from our cars, we get energy from our aesthetic.
Speaker: And so paying attention to those things that put you in a mood to
Speaker: do your work better, certainly has a monetizable effect.
Speaker: And so I think that people who've paid attention to how environments make them feel or how the cleanliness of their home makes them feel can certainly relate to how physical items can be a source of energy.
Speaker: And that's another piece of, I think that you...
Speaker: Again, that's a piece of the shadow for you and I, is the physical environment.
Speaker: How do we dial that in?
Speaker: How do we make that right?
Speaker: Because we're inclined to be in abstract land and sort of neglecting the physical.
Speaker: And so a little bit of attention to that from guys like us goes a long way.
Speaker: My wardrobe.
Speaker: I updated my wardrobe a little bit recently, and it feels different.
Speaker: a webcam on the podcast for a while.
Speaker: And so I was doing stuff in my pajamas and not really caring about my appearance.
Speaker: And I didn't feel that the quality dipped.
Speaker: But then when I got the webcam and I was like, all right, I need to shower.
Speaker: I need to put a shirt on.
Speaker: I need to clean up my situation.
Speaker: I was way more dialed in.
Speaker: I was way more conscious of who I was and what I was there to accomplish.
Speaker: And it was a really positive thing.
Speaker: So yeah, I think...
Speaker: There's a sense in which I think men in particular, and Tanner rails against this all the time, Tanner Guzzi, rails against this idea of it doesn't matter what I wear, it doesn't matter how I look, real men don't care how they look.
Speaker: And there's a critique that that's responding to, right?
Speaker: Which is you don't want to be image-obsessed.
Speaker: You don't want to be an empty suit.
Speaker: But...
Speaker: There's a balance to be struck there, caring about that.
Speaker: Like what people think of you does in fact matter.
Speaker: How they see you does in fact matter.
Speaker: What you physically project is just as much a piece of your communication as the things that you say.
Speaker: And if you make that communication careless, then you are communicating carelessly.
Speaker: And you're kind of responsible for what shakes out from that.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: I think, you know, especially for those of us who tend to be to live in our to like to live in our minds or to like to live in our projects, and we see a diminished value on the physical, you know, I think it's about, again, going back to recalling stories.
Speaker: Can you recall a time when you did feel really nice?
Speaker: And it did feel it did give you energy and it did.
Speaker: And it's like, yeah, man, I remember how I remember how wearing a suit made me feel that day.
Speaker: And I remember how I was treated differently.
Speaker: And then as you relate it to sort of your economic life, it's like, well, could you see how, back to your nephew, how a Tesla could change the way I approach my sales calls.
Speaker: And certainly I also, I love how there's kind of this ethos in sales of more sales will solve all the problems.
Speaker: So he certainly applied that to his Tesla.
Speaker: He's like, I'll sell my way out.
Speaker: I'll figure this out.
Speaker: Well, and I mean, I think so.
Speaker: So if you've spent any time around like Provo bros in Utah, around BYU and BYU, Idaho, the summer sales guy who has a Tesla has a very different pitch when he's saying, hey, guys, do you want to go knock doors in Alabama in 100 degree heat all summer long?
Speaker: Here's the Tesla.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Like, like it, it, it, it's not just like, it's not just a mindset thing.
Speaker: It's part of his pitch.
Speaker: And, and so, and I think, I think, I think there's an aspiration, you know, I think we want to be.
Speaker: a little bit aspirational in all things to some degree.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I think a full, and I think, you know, Tanner Tanner's work especially has been great about, you know, not being image obsessed, but being image cognizant for sure.
Speaker: And image intentional.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And to the extent that I've had to rely on others to help me with that or to, to bring in, you know, like for me, I,
Speaker: I have a cleaning person.
Speaker: I don't like to clean.
Speaker: I didn't like it as a kid, but I noticed that in my early career that I could, that was one thing that really impacted my mood really nicely was a clean house.
Speaker: And I felt that I would sell my way, make a few sales to pay for it.
Speaker: Yeah, I think entrepreneurship in general changes your attitude toward money because it is so dependent on... I mean, I got a raise once a year for six years.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it was usually... Unless I was getting defensively promoted because I presented an offer, it was a couple thousand bucks a year.
Speaker: It was typical.
Speaker: And my income now...
Speaker: If somebody cancels on me or somebody signs up, that's basically that raise.
Speaker: And it happens a couple times a week or that demotion.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: And so getting used to the idea of your income as something that you can directly influence is very scary and it's very powerful.
Speaker: Yeah, it is very scary.
Speaker: And that probably addresses an area of the sales mindset that has to be harnessed.
Speaker: And I know that there's plenty of Tony Robbins in managing your state and those types of guys out there that really help to teach you to have the stomach for variable income.
Speaker: And that is a different thing.
Speaker: The beauty of it is that when it rains, you store the water.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then, you know, and then, and likewise in low times, but I think, I think there's something sort of primal that you can tap into from, you know, let me go out there and make weather.
Speaker: Let me go out there and affect, use my million dollar mouthpiece, you know, my mouth and my, my, my way of speaking and my, in my service to others as a, as, as its own tool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think, I think you, it,
Speaker: It feels weird to liken this to farming, but there's an acknowledgement when it's all on you.
Speaker: There's kind of an acknowledgement of providence.
Speaker: There's an acknowledgement that you're not in control.
Speaker: There's pieces of it that you can control.
Speaker: You can do your best, but if God doesn't make it rain, it doesn't rain.
Speaker: Nothing grows.
Speaker: and you can till and hoe and weed all you want.
Speaker: It doesn't make any difference.
Speaker: And, and, um, and I think, I think that has really changed things around for me because I've watched as my prayerfulness and my mindfulness towards spiritual things has, has been like heightened on a day-to-day basis because I'm like, heavenly father, I need help.
Speaker: This, I,
Speaker: it is not guaranteed that everything works out here.
Speaker: Obviously, that's true of a wage job too, but it's so much easier to coast.
Speaker: It's so much easier to just cash the check.
Speaker: If you've got a problem, it's going to creep up on you for months, and then it's going to explode.
Speaker: You're going to get fired.
Speaker: But in this situation, you're daily confronting your own accountability for what happens.
Speaker: Yeah, I think there is certainly a real sense being outside of a large organization, right?
Speaker: Being more...
Speaker: on your own and in control of that, that providing for your family is a beautiful thing.
Speaker: But it's certainly you feel you feel the exposure to the elements much more.
Speaker: And that the spiritual element of that is is essential.
Speaker: I think it's it's one of the ways that
Speaker: You can make peace with your inabilities.
Speaker: You make peace with your insecurities and your failings, but also feel the confidence of your ability to grow and improve.
Speaker: And I think also the family element of it too changes the math because if you're single and you're in sales or you're an entrepreneur, then you
Speaker: The worst that can happen really is embarrassment.
Speaker: You can be embarrassed.
Speaker: You can have to go to potentially the government for some to eat.
Speaker: But you're going to have – and it gets more dramatic.
Speaker: And also, you're more in charge of your spending.
Speaker: Because if you need to tighten the belt, you can always tighten the belt tighter.
Speaker: You can take it down low.
Speaker: Take it down way low.
Speaker: And I mean, that's, I tell guys this all the time.
Speaker: I don't want to be back single in my twenties, but I do have all kinds of thoughts about how I would have used that time better.
Speaker: And one of the advantages that it has is that you can take big risks.
Speaker: You can, you can jump feet first into things.
Speaker: And like, what's like that, that it kills me when I talk, when I hear, you know, single guys in their early twenties be like afraid.
Speaker: Because like, bro, nobody's going to be hungry.
Speaker: You're not going to get divorced.
Speaker: You're not like, this is it.
Speaker: What's the worst that can happen?
Speaker: What's the worst that can happen, man?
Speaker: And there's such a freedom to that.
Speaker: And so, yeah, I definitely, I think sales is a cool space for guys at that stage to operate in.
Speaker: Because it's so, it's all upside.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: And it's essential to it.
Speaker: If you think about it from an organizational understanding, a lot of the CEO is often considered the ultimate salesperson.
Speaker: And if you're thinking about having your own business, your own venture,
Speaker: to be able to relate to the salesperson, to be able to have walked a mile in his shoes is really a great way to, it's almost like it's one of many, but it's certainly a seedling of entrepreneurship.
Speaker: You start to see how
Speaker: You're as close as you can be to the incoming oxygen of the lungs of the organization.
Speaker: And that awareness of the vital opening is so important.
Speaker: And I think that a lot of people that I know that have become entrepreneurial
Speaker: were born out of sales and really just saw sales as a way to parlay into, you know, maybe, maybe attach that to a technical person or attach that to a clinical person or attach that to a trades person.
Speaker: I mean, that was, that was your journey into entrepreneurship basically.
Speaker: And I see this a lot with exit guys is they'll say, I'm doing this job.
Speaker: that I know has value independent of the organization.
Speaker: Like I know that I could break off this piece and just do it.
Speaker: And I'm not dependent on the bigger organization for the value that I deliver.
Speaker: And basically they're extracting a lot of my value.
Speaker: And so I think especially for BD guys, you know,
Speaker: used of being like the lungs being close to the, the air, because, because in, in the corporate context, that was exactly the image in my mind.
Speaker: I was in this like airless dungeon.
Speaker: I was so far from the vitality, whatever vitality exists in the defense industry.
Speaker: And, um, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Well, yeah, that's, that's totally true because I was in these classified spaces and there was no windows and it was like concrete walls.
Speaker: And I'm like three floors down and like 2,000 feet in and like just buried alive.
Speaker: And I would go talk to the BD guys, the business development guys, sales guys.
Speaker: And they had such cool stories.
Speaker: I mean, they're flying overseas.
Speaker: They're selling F-16s.
Speaker: They're like...
Speaker: making tons of money.
Speaker: It's rad.
Speaker: And I'm like, oh, how do I do that?
Speaker: And I got a bunch of, I got snowed by him for a long time.
Speaker: And then eventually somebody is like, well, that guy's a Harvard guy.
Speaker: That guy's a Yale guy.
Speaker: That guy was a colonel.
Speaker: And so he had a book of business that he brought to the table.
Speaker: Like, that's how you do it.
Speaker: That's not you.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: Would you be interested in more finance?
Speaker: And I was like, no.
Speaker: No, I wouldn't.
Speaker: And so, yeah, being close to the lungs of the organization, I think, is huge.
Speaker: And it does.
Speaker: It's probably in the corporate context the closest you can get to the vibe of entrepreneurship.
Speaker: And maybe it's good.
Speaker: Maybe it's good training wheels because you generally start with a salary.
Speaker: It's low, but there's a salary.
Speaker: And you get to kind of see if you're if you're good at it and you're building that network.
Speaker: Because like a lot of guys, you know, I
Speaker: I could not have done what I'm doing now three years ago, maybe even two years ago, because I hadn't built the community.
Speaker: I hadn't built the network.
Speaker: It didn't exist.
Speaker: It's interesting though, that you are, you crave that business development life and you didn't find it in that organization, but you found another vessel to, for which to be the business development person.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's, I often find that the, the,
Speaker: the role you're craving in one organization, you, you, you almost, it expung, it expels you out of its mouth.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then you, you go find it in the other, in another vessel.
Speaker: Yeah, I was, I was expelled.
Speaker: Spewed.
Speaker: Spewed out.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: You're a guy at this point who can do pretty much what he wants to do, at least for a good long while.
Speaker: And you have time to figure this out.
Speaker: So I got a relative who, he's a software developer, and he would basically take a remote job for six months, which was enough for him to earn his living for 18 months.
Speaker: And then he would kind of just go surfing in Bali and live on the beach and goof around.
Speaker: And then when he ran out of money, he'd go get another software job.
Speaker: And that story, I cannot tell you how compelling that was to me.
Speaker: Because it was a dream of entrepreneurship that was not about... So my little cousin who's got the Tesla, that's not me.
Speaker: He and I are very different.
Speaker: I just don't, I wouldn't enjoy it projecting that.
Speaker: I get why he likes it, but projecting that into the world is not, it would feel insincere.
Speaker: It's not me, but the idea of making enough money to do what I feel like, man, that's really compelling.
Speaker: That's really exciting to me.
Speaker: And that's, uh, you know, so we talk, we talk about Scott, um,
Speaker: Scott's a similar guy.
Speaker: He didn't have a lot of appetites.
Speaker: He just wants to read books about Jung and help people with Jung and think about Jung a lot.
Speaker: And how he makes money is almost irrelevant to him.
Speaker: And so it's like he just wants to build a business that covers that for him.
Speaker: And so for you, what's the end game?
Speaker: What gives you meaning?
Speaker: Well, I've certainly learned that prolonged periods of rest aren't the young man's game, you know, and I'm not young, young, but I'm young enough.
Speaker: And I feel that, you know, being involved in with people and being useful is really important to my mind and my soul.
Speaker: And I feel that, you know, so for me, my end game is very similar.
Speaker: You know, I've been attracted to phrases, you know,
Speaker: and people, you know, I'm attracted to the work of like Charlie Munger and some of his writing about, you know, he likes to read sometimes all day and he's worth a fraction of what Warren Buffett is worth.
Speaker: And I think, you know, the legends kind of go that he sometimes takes like 1% of Warren's position on things and, you know,
Speaker: That's the corporate lore anyway.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: That's what I've heard.
Speaker: But it's one of these things where I like to wear, for the most part, my natural expression all day.
Speaker: You know, I don't want to have to be, I don't like things that buzz me in and out of buildings on my belt.
Speaker: I don't like having to, for too long, have to be engaged in
Speaker: unnatural obligations or conversations.
Speaker: I like a natural life.
Speaker: And so for me, I've always been attracted to the stories of seasons of life, of the episode of hard work and then retreat.
Speaker: Movement is very important to me.
Speaker: I often travel when I'm stuck on an idea.
Speaker: I'll go out of town and have dinner with a family member, or I will
Speaker: you know, switch, switch Starbucks's during the middle of the day.
Speaker: If one's not giving me the right energy.
Speaker: So I have a, I have a move.
Speaker: I have a movement tax.
Speaker: That's a little bit that some guys don't have, you know, but other than that, you know, really my, my primary goal is, is to be, is to be useful, to be considered, you know, someone that you'd want to be in a valuable conversation.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And one of the things that I think about this sales consultancy idea, and this is what appealed to me about the idea of management consulting when I was in my MBA, is I hated having to sit with an organization that was dysfunctional and just deal with its dysfunctions in a way that was not going to be solvable.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And by me, anyway.
Speaker: One of the things that I loved about conversations and management consulting was they parachute you in, you give them your wise counsel, and then they get to decide if they want to use it or not.
Speaker: And it doesn't matter because you're gone.
Speaker: Like, like you, you can touch all sorts of different things and you can help
Speaker: And like you get to constantly explore new pathways and prospect and find gold always everywhere versus getting stuck into a routine.
Speaker: And I think that's super important for especially guys like us to be attacking new problems.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And I think the other thing that's exciting from a expansion mindset is that teaching and solving problems has a
Speaker: It has high leverage opportunities, right?
Speaker: So we're having a conversation right now that can be played infinitely.
Speaker: And that's an exciting thing in the mind of the soft skill thinker, I think.
Speaker: Who knows who will hear it?
Speaker: There's a way to, what's that?
Speaker: I said, who knows who will hear it?
Speaker: Who knows who will hear it and who knows what impact it might have and into what further conversations and opportunities that might lead me, kind of setting off this little message in a bottle, but an infinite bottle.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So how is Exit helping you build what you want?
Speaker: So Exit for me, you know, it has become this laboratory to really access the beginner's mind.
Speaker: And so what I mean by that is, you know, last night I had an opportunity to present some copy that I'd written to the group and got some great feedback.
Speaker: And it's certainly not something that you would want to present or that I would typically want to present to just the general public or even to a friend who's kind of like, hey, what are you doing there?
Speaker: That's not your usual thing, right?
Speaker: That's a little out there for you.
Speaker: But I think for a lot of us who are looking to try something new and try something different and maybe...
Speaker: maybe just get the momentum going.
Speaker: I feel like we're in a group where it's, it's really guys are doing that.
Speaker: You know, you're in a supportive environment.
Speaker: I think someone said on one of the calls that, you know, I want to explore this idea, but I'm not so sure where it's going to go.
Speaker: It's like, perfect.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: Well, that's exact.
Speaker: You are in the right place to talk like that.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Because we're all looking at various phases of what we want to do.
Speaker: And so, you know, for me, I, I, I've even hopped on some of the calls where I, or I hopped on a call where I wasn't really a great, the content call, content creator call.
Speaker: I'm not a content creator, but I, I have some ideas.
Speaker: And so I was able to, to dabble in that, you know, on a, on a, and it's pretty rare that you get an opportunity to
Speaker: you know, on a random Saturday to just jump in on a call with guys that are creating and developing things out there and put your toe in.
Speaker: That is, that's a unique space.
Speaker: And so I've really tried to avail myself of the rooms that we're in.
Speaker: Yeah, and I mean, so for the listeners, David runs our entrepreneurship call.
Speaker: And he's this incredible source of new ideas and new perspective and new energy.
Speaker: So the way the call works is we have five minutes where you tell us about what you're doing and maybe a problem statement.
Speaker: And then there's five minutes of questions and we dig into your idea and help you think of, you know, what's the next step for the next week?
Speaker: And
Speaker: David is that guy who's in the room taking the notes, providing the feedback.
Speaker: He's going to be on somebody's shortlist when they have the venture that they want to sell.
Speaker: And so it's an incredible incubator, I think, for that kind of idea and for those relationships.
Speaker: And so as people provide value to each other,
Speaker: this trust and this collaboration develops.
Speaker: And that's what's really fun for me to watch is like, I've watched people come in with really cool, really interesting ideas that are like transmogrified by these calls into something totally different and to me, more exciting and more interesting because they get sort of bombarded from all sides by all these different
Speaker: people with different angles on it.
Speaker: And, and the alchemy is super cool to witness.
Speaker: And David, you're, you're a big part of that.
Speaker: So I really appreciate you being willing to do this podcast.
Speaker: I really appreciate everything that you're doing in the group.
Speaker: And thanks for being on the show, man.
Speaker: Well, Hey, thanks Bennett.
Speaker: Appreciate it.
Speaker: If you want to learn more about David's sales consultancy, you can check him out at a Calendly link that I'm going to post in the podcast description.
Speaker: If you want to learn more about what we're doing at Exit, the accountability groups, and the creative alchemy that we're generating there, you can check us out at exitgroup.us.
Speaker: You can follow us on Twitter at exit underscore work.
